2017-06-14
**What's up with fashion?**
Things you want to get in on before they become fashionable:
- Real estate (to rent or flip)
- Startups
- Gold rushes
- Short/medium term investments
- Study/research topics
Things you want to get in on that will remain (more or less) unfashionable:
- Housing (to live in)
- Lifestyle businesses
- Anything you really care about
Things you want to get in on when they're fashionable:
- Clothing (no point in being early unless you're a fashion designer)
- Popular culture (if you want to impress people and have things in common with people)
- Being irresponsible, dishonorable, or greedy, or breaking the law (if anything bad happens, other people will sympathize with you, or there will be too many to punish)
Things you want to get in on after they've stopped being fashionable:
- Established technologies
- Important foundations for anything that needs to be useful and reliable
- Long term investments
It seems to me like following fashion is going to get more and more dangerous, because if there is a bubble, that means there is a large incentive to pop it. To be fair, there's also an enormous incentive to prop it up.
On the other hand, if you're just doing your own thing, even if you're completely vulnerable, you're a small target and it might not be worth anyone's effort to eat your lunch. But, then again, no one is going to defend you or help you out either.
Personally, I welcome any moderating forces on fashion, so that the highs may be a little less stratospheric and the lows may be a little less bottomless.
Keywords: fashion, herd behavior, hype